Does anyone with Vista have experience with the Ready Boost feature? It is the feature that allows you to use flash memory in the form of a usb drive or other device as memory for your computer. I was just wondering if anyone running Rosetta has done this and how it compares to adding more real memory. And if it makes Rosetta crunch faster.

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Ready Boost feature - it is C***

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Ready boost does not make your computer faster. I have 512MB RAM on my system, so I used my 4GB USB stick, giving about 3GB of it to readyboost, thinking it would make it go faster. Nope! It makes games go about half the speed as the OS seems to think it's getting data from "real" RAM but is in fact accessing a measly 30MB/s USB memory stick compared to 3200MB/s for the RAM. It runs faster on just the 512MB.
I don't know if adding "real" RAM makes rosetta go any more than a tiny bit (like 1 credit more per WU) faster.

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Ready boost does not make your computer faster. I have 512MB RAM on my system, so I used my 4GB USB stick, giving about 3GB of it to readyboost, thinking it would make it go faster. Nope! It makes games go about half the speed as the OS seems to think it's getting data from "real" RAM but is in fact accessing a measly 30MB/s USB memory stick compared to 3200MB/s for the RAM. It runs faster on just the 512MB.
I don't know if adding "real" RAM makes rosetta go any more than a tiny bit (like 1 credit more per WU) faster.

I agree. Reedyboot is not, in its present form, going to help your processing speed. It only helps to restart, or resume Vista PCs and laptops faster. The only time it can speed up processing is with laptop with an ExpressCard slot.

ps This is not a PCMCIA card slot.

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Jmarks

i thought the purpose of readyboost is to speed the launching of programs that would otherwise have to be fetched from the hard drive. It doesn't store (and therefore can't speed up) variable data access.

There's no substitute for adding RAM, and if it means less swap file activity, then it will speed up rosetta. However, Readyboost should speed up any computer, no matter how much RAM it has, but only when launching programs (and possibly parts of the OS?)...

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i thought the purpose of readyboost is to speed the launching of programs that would otherwise have to be fetched from the hard drive. It doesn't store (and therefore can't speed up) variable data access.

There's no substitute for adding RAM, and if it means less swap file activity, then it will speed up rosetta. However, Readyboost should speed up any computer, no matter how much RAM it has, but only when launching programs (and possibly parts of the OS?)...

Reedy boot does do that but only for the OS files and only in Windows Vista. That is why I qualified my rely with ‘in its present form’.

I think you are thinking of the new hybrid hard drives (HHD) that have as much as 4 gigs of non volatile ram memory and regular spinning platters.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128395-c,harddrives/article.html

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Jmarks

Reedy boot does do that but only for the OS files and only in Windows Vista. That is why I qualified my rely with ‘in its present form’.

I think you are thinking of the new hybrid hard drives (HHD) that have as much as 4 gigs of non volatile ram memory and regular spinning platters.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128395-c,harddrives/article.html

I'm fairly sure it's programs too - not just OS files - anything static that can be prefetched.

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Reedy boot does do that but only for the OS files and only in Windows Vista. That is why I qualified my rely with ‘in its present form’.

I think you are thinking of the new hybrid hard drives (HHD) that have as much as 4 gigs of non volatile ram memory and regular spinning platters.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128395-c,harddrives/article.html

I'm fairly sure it's programs too - not just OS files - anything static that can be prefetched.

That is why I said that it does help for laptops. This is because the system boards are slow to begin with. With desktops pcs it is slower than the system memory etc. so it only helps speed up boot time.

http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/05/10/flash-memory-hard-drives-can-cost-you-a-fortune

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Jmarks

Reedy boot does do that but only for the OS files and only in Windows Vista. That is why I qualified my rely with ‘in its present form’.

I think you are thinking of the new hybrid hard drives (HHD) that have as much as 4 gigs of non volatile ram memory and regular spinning platters.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128395-c,harddrives/article.html

I'm fairly sure it's programs too - not just OS files - anything static that can be prefetched.

That is why I said that it does help for laptops. This is because the system boards are slow to begin with. With desktops pcs it is slower than the system memory etc. so it only helps speed up boot time.

http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/05/10/flash-memory-hard-drives-can-cost-you-a-fortune

It's not there to compensate for slow memory etc - only slow HD access. yeah, that means more of a difference to laptops, but only because they have slower HDs - not because of the memory or motherboard interconnect speeds. It does also help on desktops because (suitable) flash drives have faster seek times than HDs.

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The following MS forums thread might give you a small insight in using ReadyBoost.

How much does ReadBoot really help? in Windows Vista General Discussion

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The october 2007 issue of CPU magazine ran some tests with many different USB drives. Ready Boost actually slows down everything. It's worth reading.

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Reno, NV
Team: SETI.USA